The good old days!

Although not all parts of the country have been so lucky (indeed some places have suffered torrential rain and even floods) we in the south east have enjoyed several days of warm sunny weather. I have always hated being cold. Mnd you, I have been very uncomfortable being too hot, e.g. in Sri Lanka. Having stripped to the buff and lying only with one's modesty covered with a thin sarong one can still be too hot. (Now,now no laughing!)
In our geography class at school I got a ticking off for reading aloud "The Japanese warm their houses by means of brassieres." Miss Lucas was convinced I did it for a laugh. How was I to know how to pronounce braziers? I'd never heard of them. The only heating in our flat was a coal fire in the living room and a coke copper in the kitchen. The copper was where we heated the water for our laundry and for our weekly bath. No bathrooms then. A tin bath which hung on a nail on the back balcony was brought in and put in front of the fire, then filled with buckets of hot water from the copper. We took it in turns to bathe. The grown ups were screened by towels hung on a wooden clothes horse.
The laundry was done in bowls in the sink. Bars of Sunlight soap and the clothes rubbed hard on a washboard. This could rub your knuckles sore if you weren't paying attention! Then rinsing and all white things put in a bucket with water and a blue bag, Reckitts Blue. Tablecloths and men's collars were put to one side to be starched with Robins Starch.

Drying clothes was always a problem. If the wather was dry the small back balcony was a trap for the unwary who needed to use the loo which was on the balcony next to the coal cupboard. The wet sheets would wrap themselves around you. If the weather was bad the laundry had to be hung in the kitchen. There was a large wooden mangle in the kitchen. Everything went through the mangle before being hung up. Another trap for the unwary. Fingers could get squashed. When almost dry sheets and pillow cases and hankies would go through the mangle to save ironing which was done with irons heated on the gas cooker and then the irons were put on a silver "slipper" so as not to dirty the clothes.
The ironing was done on a blanket covered with an old sheet on the kitchen table.A lot of the housewife's time was spent doing the laundry. No wonder clothes were only changed once a week unless really dirty, though men usually had a clean collar every day. How times change!